Build Your LoRa Gateway with an Orange Pi Zero and RAK831

The maker Edzelf recently open sourced his affordable LoRa gateway on Github. He combined a low-cost Orange Pi Zero with Rak wireless RAK831 concentrator module kit via a custom cable, and a power supply board, all assembled into a metal case. For his project he spent less than $160.

RAK831 communicates with Orange Pi Zero over an SPI connection. You can choose some other Orange Pi boards for the project, but note that Orange Pi Zero Plus lacks a spare SPI interface, and can’t be used with this particular application. The maker also added a fan for cooling, as well as a USB serial debug board for debugging purpose, but it can be removed once the gateway is in the field.

About the software, Edzelf installed Armbian 5.38 on the board, and setup the timezone and WiFi, as well as enabled SPI and GPIO interfaces with armbian-config.

For further information about installation and configuration, you can refer to the GitHub page.